


like a wounded animal

by carnival_papers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Crying, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Soft Kylux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 05:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7604893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnival_papers/pseuds/carnival_papers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Starkiller, Hux tries to hold it together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a wounded animal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bygoneboy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bygoneboy/gifts).



> happy birthday mak! this fic was inspired by [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhmj7O2jArU) and your love of soft kylux. i hope you like it and that you have a wonderful birthday!

It happens after Starkiller, in the long, cold, chaotic hours following the base’s destruction. Hux has lost track of time—lost track of everything, really—since they were evacuated to the Finalizer, a wounded Ren in tow. The quick escape on the command shuttle had been horrific—Hux’s face pressed against the tiny window, watching the planet implode. And then the dark, dark feeling had settled over him like snow, penetrating the very marrow of his bones, his blood and breath.

Ren had been taken straight to medbay when they’d docked at the Finalizer. So much blood on his face, sticking to his awful clothes, soaking through Hux’s gloves where he’d nearly dragged Ren to the speeder, which would take them to the shuttle, which would take them to the Finalizer. He’d repeated these words like a mantra as he’d sprinted through the snow, _speeder-shuttle-ship_ , and then he’d seen the scarlet splash of Ren’s blood, and Ren, gritting his teeth and gasping, _speeder-shuttle-ship_.

Now, in his quarters, Hux tries to think of anything else. He’d pushed away Mitaka as he’d moved down the hall, ghostlike. No time for orders, no time for anything. He’d stripped off his uniform (singed here and there, spotted with blood in other places) and stepped into the shower, hoping maybe hot water could stave off the chill, could wake him from this horrible dream.

Nothing. Water pounds against his back and he leans against the tiled wall and feels nothing. A total loss.

Starkiller has been his life since his promotion to general. It was an opportunity to prove himself—to the Order, to Snoke, to his father. Proof that a scrawny bastard boy could be worth something, too. And for a while it had been successful— _he_ had been successful. He’d been called _brilliant_ , and when they’d soared over the completed base, there’d been a tightening in his heart that felt like accomplishment, like winning.

And now Starkiller is nothing. Less than nothing. An absence.

He adjusts the temperature as high as it will go. The scalding on his skin feels far away—someone else’s pain, someone else’s hurt.

When he’d been given over to Brendol (taken, really, from his mother, who’d fed him sweets and creamy soups and indulged him in every possible way, until his belly was round and he was happy) he’d learned that he was weak, and that he would always be weak, and that he was a bastard, and that he would always be a bastard. These unshakeable truths have shaped him; he has found himself constantly pursued by the knowledge that he is less. For so long, he’d thought that Starkiller could be his escape—that, in the holorecords, it would not be Brendol they’d mention, but Armitage, who’d overcome his origins to create something incredible.

But he hadn’t. He’s only managed to prove his father right. All that time wasted, all that progress lost.

No matter. Ren is alive. He shuts off the water, rakes his wet hair back with his hand.

Hux hasn’t allowed himself to think too much about Ren, mostly because he’s been too busy trying not to think about Starkiller. But he keeps coming back to the image of Ren in the snow, his big body all curled into himself, a red gash across his face. He’d thought for a moment that Ren was dead, and that he’d be bringing a corpse back to Snoke, but Ren had groaned so loudly when Hux touched him that Hux felt it in his body.

Despite himself, he’s worried. He’s come to feel some sort of—not quite affection, but maybe concern for Ren. A fear that he might suddenly not be around any longer. And then what would Hux do? Ren understands him. Is the only person who has ever made any effort to understand him. And that scares Hux, but the prospect of losing Ren scares Hux even more.

He dries himself off, finds a clean uniform in his closet. The thought of walking down the corridors, having to face his officers and his mistakes—it turns his stomach. It would have been easier if he’d just stayed on Starkiller; he could have sent Ren onto the shuttle and stayed there with his base while it burned up. Wouldn’t that have been better? To go out in almost-glory, almost-martyrdom?

It would have been cowardly. But perhaps he ought to have anyway.

He doesn’t bother slicking down his hair. Doesn’t see the point. There are reports to write, new blueprints to draw up, new plans to make. And yet he feels no push to do any of the things which need to be done, which—before this disaster—he used to relish doing, because he was good at them, and because the rote tasks were calming.

Now, he finds himself plagued with thoughts of Ren and thoughts of Starkiller, the two inextricably intertwined. How he’d lost one and nearly lost the other; how, suddenly, he isn’t sure which loss would hurt him more.

Ren has been injured before, on his missions to distant systems, sent there by Snoke or the Order, to dispatch whatever enemies were threatening them that week. And he would return at strange hours, smelling of some other being’s entrails and his own sweat, and more than once it had lead to the two of them sharing a shower, where dirt and dust would pour off Ren’s shoulders in rivulets, and Hux would search Ren’s back and shoulders for fresh cuts and bruises to be tended after they’d cleaned up.

It felt important, caring for him. It gave Hux a strange sense of purpose that the Order did not. Holding this odd, powerful, boyish man’s life in his hands and knowing that he owned him. That was something the Order could not provide.

He isn’t sure when it turned from just sex to something else. There was a time, not too long ago, after a very long shift, when Ren had burst into Hux’s room, his breath heavy through the vocoder of his helmet, and said he’d sensed something. His father, back on an old ship they’d shared so many years ago. Hux hadn’t thought of him having a father before then, really, and now Hux knows that Ren’s father is dead at his own hands—he’d admitted this, teary-eyed, on the command shuttle, and Hux had pushed him away but now it’s a hot stone in the bottom of his stomach.

That night, he’d removed Ren’s helmet with steady hands, touched his soft face, kissed him for hours, hours. And Ren had yielded the way he always did, but he’d brushed the inside of Hux’s mind with his own, with the Force, and the sensation had been so strange and filling that he could only cling to Ren, begging to feel it again.

Ren. He needs to see Ren. He’d watched them wheel him down the corridor to medbay, Ren bellowing all the while, and he’d let Ren go. At the time it had felt wrong, because everything feels wrong now that Starkiller is gone. Some part of him had yearned to go with Ren, but—to do so might betray his feelings, their arrangement, and in the aftermath of what’s happened, Hux can’t handle that, too.

Still. He needs to see Ren. No doubt he’s causing hell in the medbay. He’s never let anyone but Hux tend his injuries, and even then, he’s brayed and shouted like a trapped animal. It takes gentleness to calm Ren—soft touches, kind words, easy fingertips skimming over torn skin or the curve of his jaw. The medical officers and the droids down there, they won’t know that, and they’ll try to be tough with him. Hux’s mind spins with images of Ren shoving them into trays of equipment, his face red and hot with tears, blood still caked on his face and shoulder.

Hux pulls on his boots and a fresh pair of gloves and forces himself to make the walk down the corridor. He avoids eye contact with the few officers who pass by him, instead staring at the cool black floors, thinking of Ren.

Just a few days ago, it had seemed that they held the universe in their hands.

At the entrance to the medbay, he asks for Ren, and the officer nods and sends Hux all the way to the back of the bay. He must pass through a maze of curtained-off gurneys, beeping machines and patients with various levels of injury. These are his people—his troops and his officers—and so little is left now, so few. Someone is wailing. He cannot make himself look to see who it might be.

He finds Ren’s room tucked away in a corner, a discreet screen reading _PRIVATE_ next to the doorway. Hux removes a glove, presses his thumb to the scanner beneath the screen, and the hydraulics in the doors activate, wheezing as they open. He’s afraid of what he’ll see when he steps inside.

The lights in the room are set low, probably no more than 15 or 20 percent, and there’s a long horizontal viewport through which Hux can see the space where Starkiller once was. A single ergonomic chair in the corner, several monitors near the bed humming and displaying stats that Hux can’t interpret. A too-small bed with a thin mattress and thinner sheets.

And in the bed, Ren. His cloak and tunic have been removed and his chest is bare now, thick beige bandages wrapped around his stomach and up to his shoulder. The bandages are ruddy red in places where Ren’s blood has dried, and there are various smaller cuts and bruises up his torso, dressed with bacta or some other healing agent. His face is cleaved into halves by the widening chasm that spills down Ren’s shoulder. His brow is furrowed, his eyes closed.

“Ren,” Hux says. It’s hardly a breath, but it feels too loud for this silent room. Ren’s lashes twitch. Hux steps closer to the bed. “Ren,” he says again, and this time he lays his hand on Ren’s unwounded shoulder.

Ren draws in a sharp breath, eyes slowly opening. He glances up at Hux and Hux feels a thick ache, and then Ren pushing at the edges of Hux’s mind. It’s odd to be searched from inside like this, but there’s a sort of comfort in it, so Hux lets Ren in. He feels Ren moving about before settling in, a dog at the foot of its master’s bed. Even more than the sex, Hux has come to enjoy this—Ren’s mind opening inside his own, an exquisite violation.

He hasn’t moved his hand away. “You’re worried about me,” Ren says. “And now you feel embarrassed that I know that.”

“How astute,” Hux mutters. Ren’s lips briefly quirk with the hint of a smile. “I wanted to be sure you weren’t dead.”

“I’m not.”

“No. You’re not.” _Blessedly_ , Hux thinks, before he can make himself not think it, and there’s a sort of warmth inside him. “What’s your prognosis?”

Any smile on Ren’s lips fades now. He turns his head away, pale neck stretching as he does. Hux draws a gloved fingertip over the vein that protrudes, over Ren’s tender throat. “The bowcaster should have killed me,” Ren says. Images flashing in Hux’s head: a quick shot from a Wookiee (a feeling of familiarity), FN-2187, the scavenger girl with a lightsaber in hand. “Chewie—that Wookiee—he should have killed me. The girl severed some tendons in my arm. They said there’s not enough bacta to fill a tank.”

Hux doesn’t say, _what about your face_ , but Ren must sense it. He shakes his head, says quietly, “It’s going to scar.”

Hux slips his hand to Ren’s cheek, gently turns Ren’s face toward him again. “I was worried,” Hux says. “I thought I’d—”

 _Thought I’d lose you too_. And again he’s struck by the feeling that’s lived in him since he watched Starkiller die—an immeasurable sense of loss. Ren leans his face against Hux’s palm and Hux realizes, then, how close he was to never feeling this again, never having Ren’s solid, sturdy body in his hands. Hux’s breath catches, his chest tightening.

Ren says, “Hux,” and he places a hand over Hux’s, and he groans as he turns onto his wounded side. It’s a ghastly noise that strikes through Hux as Ren’s pain shatters inside him. It’s a crushing, a searing, and Hux gasps at knowing the depth of Ren’s hurt.

Hux becomes terribly aware of his own weakness when, for the first time in uncountable years, tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He tries to blink them away, to look up at the light over Ren’s bed, but it’s no use. The first tear trickles down his cheek, and Ren breathes, “Hux,” again.

If he had lost Ren and Starkiller at once, in one fell swoop—Hux thinks there would be no point in going on. And that was so close to happening. He was so close to never seeing this lovely marred face again, feeling Ren’s fingers tugging off his glove and pressing the new bare palm to his cheek, Ren reaching for him with his wounded arm, gritting his teeth as he does, pulling Hux into the tiny bed.

“Hux,” Ren is saying, “Hux, I’m here, I’ve got you,” and he’s easing an arm under Hux’s body and tucking Hux’s head under his chin and holding Hux tight. And Hux is weeping now, curling his bare hand into a fist against Ren’s chest, digging his nails in, part of him hating Ren for getting hurt. Ren is in Hux’s mind and he is soothing away the ache, his voice so quiet in Hux’s head saying _it’s alright,_ tamping down the images of Starkiller that rise up in Hux’s mind and replacing them with kind touch and kisses on the crown of Hux’s head.

Mere weeks ago, Hux would have scoffed at this—clinging to Ren as though he’s shelter in a storm, sobbing into his chest like some kind of child. But he no longer has Starkiller—the closest thing Hux had to a home—so he holds on to Ren. Breathes in deeply of the bacta-and-sweat scent of his skin. Listens close to the promise of his heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://www.huxcrying.tumblr.com)!


End file.
